Whether you want to know:
- How and when you (especially businesses and journalists) may re-use or cite a small piece of our content or ideas, or
- What we agree to do for you to make this the most trustworthy financial comparison site, or
- About our policy for investment disclosure, or
- About our liability if we get it wrong
- Disclaimers regarding our products and services
It's all in here.
We've tried to make it as plain English as possible, but let us know if you don't understand something.
T&Cs for everyone
By using this site, you accept that:
- This 4thWay® website is not intended for use by any person in any country where such use would be contrary to local law or regulation.
- The information in the 4thWay® website is journalism that is for information and educational purposes only, even when written by a specialist.
- Opinions are just that; they're not personalised recommendations so please do your own further research.
- 4thWay® makes no representation or warranty as to the completeness or accuracy of the information contained on the website.
- The information on the 4thWay® website may be withdrawn or changed at any time without notice.
- The information on the 4thWay® website should not be deemed to constitute investment advice and should not be relied on as the basis for a decision to enter into a transaction.
- Consult your own advisers before entering into any P2P lending transaction or other investment.
- 4thWay® accepts no liability for any losses or consequential loss incurred by lenders/investors acting upon any information on the website.
- The information on the 4thWay® website may be used or reproduced for your own personal use only (but may not otherwise be used or reproduced without the prior written consent of 4thWay®).
- You may not make public any content, thoughts or ideas that we make available to our paying customers only, without our express permission. This could include (but not be limited to) some special reports, and other information, data, articles, guides and social content.
- These terms and conditions and your use of the website are governed by English law and you submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts.
About the 4thWay PLUS Ratings and 4thWay Risk Scores
It is a big challenge rating investments accurately, not least because we rely on data and information from P2P lending companies and others. That's why, while the 4thWay® PLUS Ratings and 4thWay® Risk Scores are objective, consistent mathematical measures of risk and return that we are proud of and are working to improve all the time, they're not infallible. We can never cover all risks perfectly in a score.
The 4thWay® PLUS Ratings and 4thWay® Risk Scores, are indicators for guidance only; they are not guarantees or promises. Furthermore, they reflect an average; performance will vary based on the specific loans that you are lending in, especially if you lend to very few borrowers.
The 4thWay® PLUS Ratings and 4thWay® Risk Scores assume you spread your money (and risk) across a lot of loans. If you cannot do so then lend less through that specific P2P lending platform so that you have more money to lend across other platforms. In that way, you can still spread across lots of loans with similar PLUS Ratings and Risk Scores.
Along the same lines, the 4thWay® PLUS Ratings and 4thWay® Risk Scores assume you spread your money across at least six similarly rated lending accounts.
The ratings and risk scores are about the overall results from all the rated lending accounts you use. It is not to indicate that each individual lending account will perform well for you by itself.
4thWay® models the risks more conservatively than the P2P lending platforms and most or all other independent analysts in order to give lenders a margin of safety. Hence, our projected outcomes in a severe recession are likely to be worse than you'll see projected elsewhere.
Our other 4thWay Ratings, called the 4thWay® Alternative Ratings, include the Secured Property Loans Rating, the Hidden Gems Rating and the Deal-Making Opportunities Rating. These can sometimes be a little more qualitative but are still offered as visual, journalistic guidance fpr your education, and are not guarantees. You must conduct additional research even if a P2P lending site has any kind of rating or risk score on the 4thWay site.
Our responsibilities to you
- We shall respect the decisions of the Panel of Peers, which is a group of website users nominated by you, when they ask us to.
- We shall always prioritise quality, complete and accurate independent information and opinion for your benefit over all other considerataions.
- Every word on this website will always be completely original, unless where we quote our sources. We will never visit other journalistic or specialist websites to steal any of their content. (And we have no need to.) Stealing content is not a victimless crime and, in addition, incorrectly copying other content leads to a higher rate of errors.
- We will always give you free access to our full comparison tables, showing every P2P lending companies that provide us with enough information about themselves to be listed.
Fair usage policy for journalists, bloggers and businesses
The content, ideas, thoughts and research expressed on this website takes a lot of time and investment, so we must protect our hard work through copyright and our other legal rights.
This is about fair and commercial use of our data and content. All of the material published on our website and other digital/wireless platforms is protected by copyright law. That's why:
- You may cite any lending accounts' 4thWay PLUS Ratings and 4thWay Risk Scores freely and without our permission. You may use the images of those ratings.
- You may cite 30 words from a 4thWay® web page, without special permission, either verbatim or in abstract if you clearly credit us and link to the source page, and provided you don't use those words to promote any product or service.
- If you want to take data, images, calculations, research, or anything else that is more than a short quote, please contact us to discuss terms. In most cases, we expect to authorise their use provided we are clearly credited, but we might prefer you to link to our website or charge a fee for its use.
- If a citation or multiple citations, or your short quotes of our data, images, calculations, research, thoughts or ideas, reduces the need for users or other third parties to access our content directly, or which creates revenue from 4thWay's content to the detriment of 4thWay's own ability to generate revenues from that content, then the action is not permitted.
- Scraping data from our website and using it in your own services or blogs is strictly prohibited. If you want to use our data, please get in touch for a quote, and we might be able to help you technically, too.
- You may not make public, re-sell or re-package for commercial use any content, thoughts or ideas that we make available to our paying customers only, without our express permission.
- If we notify you that we believe you're working outside the above parameters, you shall cease doing so immediately and your rights for doing so shall be withdrawn.
In addition, content, opinions or research on this website is occasionally from another party, in which case we will always credit the source. We ask that you respect their hard work by doing the same.
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- Retain your preferences.
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Our cookies also include third-party ones, which means anonymous data is also sent to other companies:
We use cookies from Google Analytics and MixPanel, both of which help us to decide what users collectively like and don't like about our website and keep track of the number of visitors.
Disabling cookies
Our cookies will make your browsing experience better, e.g. by speeding up the time it takes to load web pages or helping us learn what users struggle with on our site, so we can improve it.
We're not currently in the position to help you to disable any cookies. You can disable cookies on this site and others by consulting your browser's Help section or by taking a look at the About Cookies website, which offers guidance for all modern browsers.
Our privacy policy
We're not in the business of selling your data. We will not pass your personal details to anyone else, without your express permission.
We will not store your personal details, except where it is absolutely essential for running the services you ask for, e.g. if you sign up to our newsletter, we need to store your email address.
